Life Sucks In A Bridesmaid Dress

Okay so I’m in my first big wedding as an adult. I checked off the “maid of honor” role when I was 13 for my sister’s wedding, but clearly I did a whole lot of nothing in regards to planning because, well, I was 13 … penis straws and registries didn’t take precedence over N’SYNC and Britney Spears. But this is my best friend’s wedding … one of the biggest I will be in. Since August I’ve been getting schooled in the ways of weddings. And here I am in April ready to tell you that wedding industry itself might be one of the most overpriced industries in the whole entire universe.

Seriously, I’m pretty sure someone gets paid every time the word “wedding” is uttered. Who? I have no idea, but he/she just made 10 cents or something right there. I bet it is Vera Wang. Or Oprah. So let me take you down the road I like to call “how to scam an innocent bridesmaid into turning a normally priced dress into a ridiculously overpriced one.” Ahem:

I am lucky to have a best friend with fabulous taste. She isn’t one of those crazytown brides that wants to make her bridesmaids look hideous so her day isn’t taken away. She instead found a dress that is beautiful, strapless, floor length, timeless … but also really affordable. I was ecstatic, until she told me that “I could shorten it and TOTALLY wear it again,” which then I almost smacked her. But I digress.

So the boutique where we all purchased our dresses told us they do not do alterations. I had convinced myself I wouldn’t need alterations anyways because I was tall and well … usually the longer dresses just fit me better. I swear these women working in the boutique are trained to swoop in on the girls who don’t require alterations. Cue the “extra length” talk. When I got fitted the material was just skimming the floor.

Evil Dress Fitter: Do you wear high heels?

Me: Yeah, I rock about 3-4 inch heels

Evil Dress Fitter: Hmmm, even for the wedding?

Me: Probably :::twirling around in my dress in front of the mirror::::

Me: You’re right … let’s do that. I don’t want the dress to be too short now!

Seriously?! Damn you magical extra length evil fairy dust! I’m an idiot. I think it was close to $90 extra dollars for extra length. They can only add-on a certain amount of length, nothing more or less … which means I will have to get it altered regardless now because it will be far too long. Son. Of. A. Bitch.

So then she fits me for size. Measures my bust, my waist … and basically I was in between sizes. She again tries to relate to me and goes, “Honey .. I’m tall … I know how these dresses run, go with size XX. You’re like the same size as me.” Now, basically the size she wanted me to wear was two sizes bigger than my normal size. But because I know dresses run strangely sometimes and she claimed to know these God damn dresses like the back of her hand, I gave her my trust … like a damn fool. All I told her was I didn’t want to be pulling the dress up all night, in fact I wanted it so tight that I could raise the roof while dancing and not have the dress move. She seemed to understand. This was in November.

Flash forward to March … our dresses are in. I run to the boutique with my best friend, we go in the room to try it on, she zips me up and literally … the dress falls off of me. It is like ridiculously big and ridiculously long. Really? Really? And no, I didn’t lose a miraculous 20 pounds since November. So I’m in the room carrying on like a crazy lady about how I can’t raise the roof without showing the whole entire universe my taas as my best friend stood there trying to make me feel better by telling me I could wear six-inch heels or something. The vision of that Evil Dress Fitter telling me in slow motion, “it’s okay honey, you’re my size. I know this dress,” was dancing around in my head making me so annoyed I wanted to scream. But there was literally nothing I could do. I had already paid for half of the dress, and needed to suck it up, go out, and pay the rest off, and get god damn alterations. And that is what I did.

For the love of Christ, I just find it hard to believe that the boutique where we purchased our bridesmaids dresses makes no money off of the alterations process. Reason being that they did such an over the top shitty job of fitting us. My theory is that some BIG SHOT over at the boutique got together with some BIG SHOT over at places where they do alterations in the area and decided to get together and screw over bridesmaids all over South Jersey. (Yes, I pulled that from Father of the Bride … now I get why he ended up in jail.)

It honestly is such a shame. A simple yet very beautiful dress has turned into a God damn money pit for no reason other than it is a bridesmaids dress, tied to the wedding industry and therefore these people feel the need to mark up ev-er-y-thing. If this was a prom dress and I purchased it at Bloomingdale’s, we would have no problem. None.

But we bite the bullet because we love our friends dearly, right fellow bridesmaids? Even though this dress is literally a swamp thing of money, it is all going to be worth it for this beautiful occasion. But I won’t stop shaking my fist at the Evil Dress Fitter. Ever. EEEEVVVVEEERRRR!